


castle hopper-hargrove

by jillroberts



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Redemption, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, F/M, Gen, Hypersexuality, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Guilt, Sexuality Crisis, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28796637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillroberts/pseuds/jillroberts
Summary: So maybe Billy's got problems, but who the fuck gives a shit, right? Not him, that's for sure. Max doesn't. Little freak from Starcourt shouldn't. And Billy would sooner kill Harrington than have the fucker higher on the list than his dad.But. We can't all get what we want. And Billy doesn't think things can get worse until they do.Starcourt didn't kill him. But fuck it if he doesn't wish it did.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Billy Hargrove, Robin Buckley & Billy Hargrove
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57





	1. tell me we'll never get used to it

**Author's Note:**

> title from richard siken's "scheherazade"

_Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake_ _and dress them in warm clothes again.  
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running  
until they forget that they are horses.  
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,  
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,  
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days  
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple  
to slice into pieces.  
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means  
we’re inconsolable.  
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.  
These, our bodies, possessed by light.  
Tell me we’ll never get used to it._

* * *

Billy figures there’s gotta be something poetic buried in all this shit. He tries to get someone to understand, that someone fucks off. So now, no one should understand. And then someone does. And Billy fucking _depises_ her for it.

“Seven feet,” she gasps out, flat on the dirty floor of the food court, trying to catch her breath because Billy was about to fucking kill her. A firework lights up on the spine of his back, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. That _thing,_ it keeps the pain away. It leaves an imprint there, like a healed wound saying _don’t forget what I do for you._ “You told her the wave was seven feet.”

He can see it now -- California. Something about it dragging up old memories he can’t quite place. Didn’t even know there was something _to_ place before she said that, but it’s vivid now -- that little boy on the beach. He can hear her cheering, “You ran to her. On the beach. There were seagulls. She wore a hat with a blue ribbon, a long dress with a blue and red flower. Yellow-- yellow sandals, covered in sand.”

It falls into focus again.

“She was pretty,” the little girl adds, nodding her head, “She was _really_ pretty,” Billy nods too. It’s infectious. 

“And you,” she says, like a kindly executioner, “You were _happy.”_ And he sees that little boy again -- that smile and that-- that _joy._ Vivid and cutting into the flashes that paint her face from the fireworks that are battering the ugly thing’s back.

She breathes, one soft, tiny hand flat against his face, her hair fanned out like a flower above her head and her face twisted in a fearful plea, the skin sending a wave of warmth through that memory -- supercharging it and giving him a wash of others.

He sees something -- that glimpse of the boy on the beach. He sees someone so-- so _gentle,_ someone who still had that hope when his dad yelled at him, brightly lit and on display in the waver of his voice, the cadence of his begging. But it’s not-- it’s not _his_ memory anymore. It’s _her’s._

She drags her feet along the sand, feeling it sink from her weight. _She’s never seen sand like this,_ Billy realizes, _she’s never seen the ocean._ He’s not sure how he knows, not sure why all of this-- this _sticks_ to him more than his own memories. But it’s-- it’s better, he decides, that he keeps her’s. This little girl’s instead of that descent she’s about to watch.

_Run, like you always do!_ His dad calls at the little boy’s back, setting the girl off into a run, trying to find her footing on the sand, trying to put together why it keeps sliding out from under her feet, trying to catch the boy and ask him _where?_ She’s leading him somewhere, Billy realizes. _Billy’s_ leading her somewhere.

As she passes his dad, she turns, her heels digging into sediment and screams at him, drowned out in the storm, but Billy sees something in that moment, _feels_ something. Vicious and familiar anger that spews out of her mouth, that his dad remains indifferent to. 

He sees something else there, just for a moment. A flicker of white hair, tall and thin like a pencil, settled in a concrete box with a Coca-Cola can in his hand instead of a baseball bat. It feels private, but Billy can’t look away.

He opens his mouth, to argue, to defend that little girl he knows is behind him, but nothing comes out of his mouth. Not before he’s dropped back onto the beach.

She’s racing after him, balance be damned, kept upright by some marionette pulling the strings. She _knows_ she won’t fall. She _can’t_ fall. And he sees something else, _hears_ something else, echoing and overlaid, somehow louder than the storm: _where were you last night?_ And she sees him: that little boy, huddled on the other side of a cheap dinner table set.

She tries to run to him when Billy’s mom goes down, one hand clasped over her mouth, fear flooding her body, to do _something,_ to save him even if she knows she can’t do anything, that this moment has passed. But she has to _try,_ doesn’t she?

So does Billy. He sees something else, _her_ storm, brewing with clouds that settled thick humidity over a building with little windows and a million guards. He sees that same man -- that pencil man. _Papa_ her voice supplies in his head. He tries to run, but--

_I don’t understand, why not? Please, mom, don’t do this._ She tries to go to him too, to rest a hand on his shoulder and hold him close to her chest, rock him to sleep. It strikes Billy, strikes that memory to a flame. 

Strikes him into action when he falls into another hallway. Papa watches her, nothing but distaste painted across his face as she kicks along the walls, begging, screaming. When Billy tries to go to her, those guards, those men -- they crowd him, holding him there, just at the end of the hall, too far to wrench her free. To do anything.

_Get back here!_ Someone else yells, younger and derivative, pained with anger. She sees that too -- that anger. Tries again to do something, to run to that boy and wrench him up, to remind him that the beach is still there, to hold him again and sing a lullaby. Like it would put the dragon to sleep. 

He falls back into that hallway, but the walls-- they’re gone. All that’s left is two bricks of concrete, boxing that little girl into place. He tries to go to her too, but his feet-- they can’t _stick._ They keep slipping down like he’s trying to climb up a slide, never able to grasp the sides for purchase, just watching her bang her fists bloody on that door.

_This is your new sister,_ Billy follows the order. _Shake her hand._ The little girl still keeps _going,_ keeps trying to touch those memories, to disturb what has already settled into cement. She still-- she keeps trying to _change_ it. But always too far. Always too late.

He hears his own screaming, his own questions. He feels that rush of determination to reach that little boy, to get across the beach replaced with cold, hard fear. There is no defiance. There is no want to change the story. 

His life strikes him then. Running into him like a freight train. He sees all those moments in between, those basketball games, the weeklong benders, the missed calls, the move. Indiana. Steelworks. All the shit that had been locked away in favor of-- of that _thing_ tugging him along the line like a puppeteer. The girl whirls in a circle, squinting her eyes in the wind and finally, _finally_ touches something other than sand.

He sees something too. Hears the sound of a family clattering around upstairs, a mother scolding-- scolding-- _Mike,_ the little girl’s voice chirps. Scolding Mike. _He didn’t rinse the dishes,_ she adds.

When he turns, he sees that little girl from Starcourt, right there. Close enough he could-- he could _save_ her. But his fingers feel like lead and his bones feel like they’ve each taken up the weight of a bodybuilder. 

_He didn’t rinse the dishes,_ she repeats, pulling her knees up to her chest and sliding further back on blankets into a blanket fort, _Have you ever built one of these?_ She asks him, drawing her finger around the dial of a walkie-talkie, _a blanket fort?_

He scours through his own memories, trying to draw up something so-- so _close._ It’s right there. But it slips through his fingers like he’s trying to hold water, _I can’t find it,_ he answers, frustration clogging up his throat.

_It’s okay,_ she says back, still twisting the dial and trying to sift through static, _I liked this one._

She peers back up to the roof, listening to a chorus of laughter that feels like it was pried straight off _The Andy Griffith Show._ A wholesome, gung-ho American household. _He has a family,_ she says, _they taught him to make this fort._ She grazes her fingers over the wooden chairs that act as the walls, _this was his grandma’s quilt,_ she continues, drawing her fingers over the blanket underneath them. 

_Did you?_ He finds himself asking.

She smiles at him, _not like his._ She looks over the roof of the fort, weighed down by age and all those years she burned in that box, _but you know how to make one, don’t you?_

And then they’re back on the Starcourt floor, that safety, that warmth tucked away in the fort lost. She’s _still_ smiling at him, strained and tight, but smiling all the same. 

The memory of a blanket fort hits him.

He stands up.

* * *

He can’t _take_ it. All those stares, Max lingering in the frame of his door, peering around the corner to say, “Billy? Are you awake?” Before padding across the carpets and folding herself up at the foot of his bed like some child-sentry. 

His dad fucked off too. Just for a few weeks. Not like he could justify all his shit when Billy couldn’t even get out of bed. Not to Susan anyway. It wasn’t like Billy was going to complain. Far as he was concerned, he would thank his dad for beating his ass to next Monday. It was better than this Twilight Zone care Max followed him around with. He _really_ fucking wishes he hadn’t said _I’m sorry,_ because he’s not sure he means it anymore.

“Get out, Max,” he mutters into his pillow, yanking the duvet _she fucking washed_ for _him_ over his head, “I’m trying to fucking sleep.”

She bristles, a ghost of that little girl who said _because of you_ in his Camaro. 

Max wiggles down to hide over the edge of his bedframe, laying down on the carpet that Billy knows, from experience, isn’t comfortable. Smells like a bitch, exhaling cigarette smoke with every minutiae movement, crusty to the touch from old tenants and Billy’s habit of eating on the floor and never bothering to wipe up the crumbs. 

But there’s not the sound of her fuzzy socks he’d gotten her for Christmas padding out of the room and back to her own. Billy knows for a fact she’s got to be wearing them. Always is. (Even though, before July, he was certain she had lit them on fire and put the ash in his beer.)

Instead, there’s just the sound of settlement, like sand on the seafloor, carving out her own bed on the carpet. He can see the top of her hair, red glinting moonlight through the blinds’ slats, fanning out around her head like a crown. 

He grunts and rolls over onto his back, kicking the blanket off, “Get up.”

She doesn’t. 

He drags himself onto his hands and knees, wondering where the _hell_ she gets off when he hears it. He hears her fucking _crying._

He freezes, hanging halfway over the edge of the bed, his necklace dangling in that menacing shadow his body is casting over her pajamas. She’s huddled up, her knees close to her chest like a baby, her hands folded over her mouth to quiet the sound but doing nothing to help the shake of her shoulders.

He lowers himself back onto his ass, sinking into the bed like he weighs twice as much, watching the vulgar poster pinned to his wall above her body of a sultry woman with half-lidded eyes and an ashy grey line above clumpy eyelashes. He’d been toying with the idea of taking them down ever since Max started her routine of wandering into his room like an annoying dog, constantly nipping at his ankles, teeth pulling at the cuff of his sweatpants, pleading _take me for a walk, please, come on, get out of bed._

She draws in a stuttering breath, forceful when it falls out of her lips and accompanied by a strained sound that’s close to a sob.

Billy gets the inkling he should say something. But what the fuck is _he_ supposed to say? Fuck, he shouldn’t even be given the privilege of hearing it. And _seeing_ it? Whole other ballpark altogether. He feels something rush through him, thinking about his demand to get the fuck out. He wants to say it again, but this time closer to _please get out, I’m not supposed to see you like this. I can’t fucking stand it._

But instead, he lowers himself back onto the bed and tugs the blanket back over himself and closes his eyes. Does what the Hargroves and Mayfields do best and pretends he didn’t hear a thing.

* * *

The next morning, she’s still in his room. The second he opens his eyes, he sees the back of her head, her hair tangled in knots from the rough carpet texture. Billy wants to kick himself for not offering her a pillow. Or at least a fucking _blanket._ But then, they’d both have to live with the knowledge he saw.

Her face is still covered in a thin layer of grease and it occurs to Billy she hadn’t left his room since he fell asleep. She had a tendency to leave the door open. Ignores Billy whenever he tells her to close it. Takes his dirty dishes too. Sometimes his laundry if she’s got the time to kill. But his door is still shut, keeping the rest of the world at bay. And the dishes are still on his nightstand, crowding the surface and staining their rings into the wood

She doesn’t notice he’s awake, too busy sorting through his box of cassette tapes, flicking through with a quiet murmur of appreciation when she sees a song she likes, drawing her index finger up the spine to tip it up and set it aside. 

She gets about halfway through before she withdraws her hands and pulls that shitty walkie-talkie she keeps on hand at all fucking times nowadays, “There’s three different Joni Mitchell tapes,” she mutters into the static with a degree of glee, “I really thought there would be more Billy Idol.”

Billy grazes the top of her head with one hand, rolling over onto his side and saying, “They’re organized by mood, shithead.”

“Why are Fleetwood Mac and Duran Duran the same mood?”

The walkie-talkie crackles, that _annoying_ little shit from the Wheeler house chirping up, “Is he awake?”

Billy snatches it out of Max’s lap and turns the box over in his hands, “Where the fuck’s the off button on this shit?”

When Max tries to reach for it, he pulls it out of her reach, holding it in the air like a carrot on a stick, “Give it back, asshole.”

“Quit fucking cursing,” he mutters back, tossing it at her, hoping it lands on the floor and breaks. He’s _so_ sick of listening to Max talk to her friends about _everything._ It feels insulting that he’s the one in his senior year and can’t even get laid and she’s doing-- whatever the fuck freshmen do with their boyfriends. Sure as hell not anything more than kissing, gauging by the way Max fumes when Billy comments on their discussions.

She catches it mid-air, pulling it close to her chest and folding her arms over it like a child protecting their teddy bear, “You’re such a dick.”

“No shit?”

He watches her face contort through a few years' worth of emotions -- that early anger when she had said _My name’s Max,_ then the kid who told his dad his shit in California, then the kid who said _because of you_ in the Camaro, then the kid who had faced him through that little glass box and finally -- that kid who had been to Starcourt with him. She settles there, “Go get ready.”

“For what?”

“Arcade,” she pauses, “Hurry up. I don’t want to be late.” Then she finally, _finally_ leaves his fucking room.

* * *

Billy doesn’t get ready. 

Instead, he lays back down and wishes he hadn’t pulled all that dumb shit when they first moved because then his handle would still have a fucking lock. He could’ve kept Max out and had some peace and quiet for five minutes. But no. She barges in, hair pulled into a ponytail and stress eating at her skin, saying, “I said get ready.”

“Do you ever knock?” He says in lieu of a reply, burrowing further into the nest of blankets he’s accumulated since coming home, “What if I was naked or something?”

Max’s nose scrunches up as she marches to his closet, “Then gross,” she whisks a few hangars across the bar strung along his closet and adds, “Don’t you have any normal clothes?”

* * *

He wants to ask Max who she is. Who that little girl at the mall was. He wants to hand her back those memories, those years she let him take in that box. He wants to ask her if she wants to keep his. He wants her to say yes. To make that load a little lighter.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he considers praying when he readies himself to go to sleep. Like now.

He might be going to sleep in the front seat of his Camaro. Might be hot as shit and he might be sweaty as shit, but it’s better than being cold. It’s _so_ much better than being cold. 

And Max isn’t here. She’s inside with her shithead friends, stomping around those geometric carpets caked with sweets and old soda. So he does. He dips his head and lets himself hope. Lets himself _pray._

He prays to see her again. His dad might not be dragging him to church considering how fucking small this town is, espcially since July, so it feels rude to ask. To knock on God’s door and say _can I have this? I know I took all of this, but… Can I have this?_

Part of him hopes God never lets him see her again. Part of him hopes that she can hold onto that boy on the beach, that boy who would never grow up into Billy, and he could hold onto the smile and the blanket fort. 

But he prays anyway. And he closes his eyes.

* * *

Wouldn’t you know it? It fucking works.

He wakes up in that fort again, surrounded by nothing but inky blackness and a sheen of water that doesn’t seem to affect the quilt. 

He looks out at all the darkness but he decides, definitively, that nothing can touch him in this fort. He decides that-- that the little girl just wouldn’t let anything get him in here. Not his dad. Not that _thing._ Not any of the other _things_ that followed it around. 

Nope. The only things that could get Billy here were Billy and the little girl.

He sees her, gliding towards him, her eyes squinted like she can’t quite place him, huddled up in her fort. He wonders if she’ll kick him out. If she’ll push him off the quilt and leave him to drown because he’s not fucking _Jesus_ and he can’t walk on water. 

But she doesn’t.

Instead, she calls out, “Billy?”

“Am I allowed to-- to be here?” He tries to right himself, tries to slide back into the role of _Billy,_ but it-- it doesn’t stick. It slides further away, like he’s still trying to climb that slide. Shit. He figures. Just a dream, “I just-- I didn’t think it would work.”

She falls onto her knees on the edge of the quilt, “You’re. Here.”

He waits for her to add onto it. To add _you’re here? Why?_ But she doesn’t. She just stares at him, her confusion written across her face without any of those barriers. He finds he can’t keep his own up as well as he’d like to, “I can go,” he pauses, “I think.”

“No,” she cuts him off, “I--” she crawls into the fort too, “No company here,” she gestures out to the water. To the dark. 

“Right,” Billy mutters. 

He waits. He waits for her to realize who he is. Waits for her to tell him to leave. To not come back. But she just sits with him, watching the dark stretch on, and on, and on. 

“What happened to the radio?” 

She peers at him through the corner of her wide eyes, curiosity unfettered and unembarrassed, “Broken,” she answers, turning to her side and sifting through the blankets to pull it back out. She holds it up, “Batteries,” she adds when she tests the on/off switch.

“Oh,” he pulls himself further into the fort, “Are you--” he swallows, watching her open the battery compartment up, flipping them around and trying the switch again, “Are you--” he sifts through all the words, _okay, fine, good,_ and settles on, “Safe?”

Her fingers don’t pause with their fiddling, but she looks over her shoulder at him, “Yes,” she narrows her eyes, scanning over the side of his face, “Are you?”

He bristles at the question, “What?”

She points out to the dark. But now, there’s a splotch of color there. Those moments on the beach. Those moments his dad was talking about baseball, “Not safe,” she says. Like that explains anything.

He shifts on the blanket, “Yes,” he lies.

She idly scratches at her cheek, “Friends don’t lie,” she murmurs like a mantra, blankly regurgitated, but binding Billy all the same.

“What’s it to you?” 

She points out at the dark again, a darker splotch of color reflected in the water. That pencil man, “You saw,” she adds, “We traded.”

He barks out a laugh that doesn’t seem to phase her. Doesn’t sting or even _stick_ the way he wants it to, “Traded what? Some bad memories?” He _does_ expect her to kick him out then. He knows as well as she does that they aren’t _bad memories._ They’re like scars, left imprinted in their DNA and always lingering on the edge of that blackness, always just below the surface if they don’t keep them there, trying to drift closer and closer.

But no. She clicks the walkie-talkie again, “Bad lifetimes.”

He has half a heart to agree. He doesn’t. 

Somehow, seeing that pencil man and his dad, clustered so close he could hear them, the fort still feels safe. It feels _safer._ They were there. They were _so close,_ so close that his dad could’ve turned, could’ve seen Billy and that little girl. But he didn’t. He just tossed his hat in the water and began to sink.

Eventually, she asks, “Will you come back?”

“Can I?”

Her eyes are so wide. _Too_ wide. It feels like an invasion of privacy to see them, “It’ll always be here.”

He nods, tracing his fingers over the curling stitches that cover the top of the quilt. There’s so many questions weighing on him; _who are you?_ Where _are you? What happened? What did you do? How did you see that? What can I do to thank you?_

Instead, he just leans back into the pillows and lets that safety wash over him like the hot springs in California, and falls asleep to the sound of the radio’s dials adjusting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me on tumblr dot com @126romans


	2. a body clouded by pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She kept up an idle contact when Neil sent word he was back home. Had some real issues and a son he couldn’t seem to get in line. Susan traded the silly letters, knock-knock jokes written at the bottom of them. 
> 
> At the end of a very personal one, detailing Neil’s ultimatum of getting a shrink or losing his high-school sweetheart, he put one that he repeated to Susan on their wedding night, still giddy from what they finally had back after all those years they lost in the war, their gray hairs left side by side on a hotel pillow.
> 
> Will you remember me in a year?  
> Yes.  
> Will you remember me in a month?  
> Yes.  
> Will you remember me in a week?  
> Yes.  
> Will you remember me in a day?  
> Yes.  
> Knock, knock.  
> Who’s there?  
> See, you forgot me already!
> 
> But neither of them were ever quite free of that battlefield.
> 
> She was certain Billy had one of his very own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey did you guys know that in the battle of starcourt teleplay, the action lines read "He's dead. No more suffering. Max breaks down. Sobbing." i hate the duffer brothers so bad you guys have no idea

_When the doctor suggested surgery  
_ _and a brace for all my youngest years,  
_ _my parents scrambled to take me  
_ _to massage therapy, deep tissue work,  
_ _osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine  
_ _unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,  
_ _and move more in a body unclouded  
_ _by pain. My mom would tell me to sing  
_ _songs to her the whole forty-five minute  
_ _drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-  
_ _five minutes back from physical therapy._

 _She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered  
_ _by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,  
_ _because I thought she liked it. I never  
_ _asked her what she gave up to drive me,  
_ _or how her day was before this chore. Today,  
_ _at her age, I was driving myself home from yet  
_ _another spine appointment, singing along  
_ _to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,  
_ _and I saw a mom take her raincoat off  
_ _and give it to her young daughter when  
_ _a storm took over the afternoon._ My god, _  
_ _I thought,_ my whole life I’ve been under her  
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel  
that I never got wet.

— The Raincoat by Ada Limon

* * *

Before she had Max, Susan had big dreams of being a journalist, an author. Had scraped her way to college and scraped her way even further to the position of war correspondent. Shipped herself off to Vietnam, not even thirty years old, still wrinkle-free and saddled with the belief that she could be whatever she wanted. She could be the president if she tried hard enough. What a joke.

But she remembered the man. _Neil Hargrove._ Not a drafted kid. Just a guy who loved his country. Who wanted to be something. Be somewhere other than home. Remembered the day they met.

She had been chasing a story, still limited to the relative safety of Saigon, trailed around by bugs and the perpetual smell of sweat and endless heat. But she needed _something_ to send back home. To her journal. She needed _respect._ And a story? Well, there was a surefire way to do it and every other journalist in the country was scrambling over each other to be the first one there and with god as her witness, Susan was going to be one of them.

So she ended up there — some bunker, knees to her chest as ceaseless bangs landed in the dirt above the sorry excuse of safety they had carved into the ground of what had become a battlefield, a place of nothing but shed blood. What it was going to stay, no matter what was paved over it. What it was destined to be.

Had met Neil in there, nursing a bullet hole in his arm and surrounded by his best friend, William, who Susan would come to learn died not a month later, after she had been plucked up by her journal and flown back home because her mom was coming down with cancer and her condition was taking a nosedive. 

Had met a Neil she was stuck to, carved to each other like the teeth of a nervous man who lived off the government’s dollar, always grinding them together until they had no choice _but_ to fit. It wasn’t as though he could afford braces to get things straightened out so the answer was simple — live with that yellow. Live with that painful enamel and keep chewing shit up. 

She kept up an idle contact when Neil sent word he was back home. Had some real issues and a son he couldn’t seem to get in line. Susan traded the silly letters, knock-knock jokes written at the bottom of them. 

At the end of a very personal one, detailing Neil’s ultimatum of getting a shrink or losing his high-school sweetheart, he put one that he repeated to Susan on their wedding night, still giddy from what they finally had back after all those years they lost in the war, their gray hairs left side by side on a hotel pillow.

_Will you remember me in a year?_

_Yes._

_Will you remember me in a month?_

_Yes._

_Will you remember me in a week?_

_Yes._

_Will you remember me in a day?_

_Yes._

_Knock, knock._

_Who’s there?_

_See, you forgot me already!_

But neither of them were ever quite free of that battlefield.

Susan was lucky, really. Had scraped enough of her body out of that bunker, had blessedly left the majority of it tucked into Neil’s wounds when he held her, leaving a touch of blood on the blouse she’d worn out that day, and when she found him again, he began carting it back, atom by atom, in those letters. 

Neil wasn’t. There were countless other battles. Other wounds that left his shoulder stiff and his eyes burdened with the weight of a fear of stillness. Left his heart smeared all over the country and the last of any love for anyone who hadn’t seen that battlefield with Will. Dead in a ditch, in a pile of bodies and nothing left for him but a dog tag that Neil still kept in his bedside drawer, sitting up with his shoulders hunched in and running his fingers over the indented letters. Still stuck on that battlefield.

She was certain Billy was stuck on a battlefield.

The first glimpse she got of it was when she had been tasked with picking him up from the hospital. _Swamped with work crap, Susie,_ Neil had muttered, eyeing a beerchest he kept in the garage that was filled with nothing but Otterpops these days. 

She had nodded, unhooked the keys that were on their hooks, cat tails. Four cats in a row: _Max, Susan, Neil,_ and newly added with his Camaro’s keys hooked up, _Billy._ “Alright honey,” Max was already on the porch, pacing back and forth and raking her fingers through stringy hair, “There’s a timer for the food, okay?”

He nodded, still fixed to that chest.

Susan quietly picked his keys down too. No need to tempt fate.

Max had tried to convince her to drive Billy’s Camaro out to the hospital, take the poor thing all the way down to Indianapolis like they hadn’t just scraped the guts of the thing together, like it could do more than run down the streets without overheating. 

It was there — in his face, the moment they pushed him out on that wheelchair. The ghost of something Susan could see reflected in her own face, a refusal to meet her eyes. Nothing but a _yes, ma’am,_ when Susan had asked if he was hungry, a simple shrug when she asked where he’d like to eat. 

“Your father had some work business,” she told him, swinging into a McDonald’s at Max’s suggestion, “But he’s fixing dinner,” she lied for him. What Billy didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. She was certain he _would_ fix dinner if the poor guy knew the difference between lard and frosting. 

Billy just nodded, looking down at the shoes Max had lugged along in her backpack. She’d been rooting through Billy’s room on and off since she got news he was coming back. Trying to pin down what he’d want to wear his first day out, what would make him feel the best. Even this morning, had come out of her room as soon as Susan had made the first clatter of breakfast, holding up a pair of chucks and his old boots, _which do you think will be more comfortable?_ Had shaken Susan off when she answered chucks and said, _I’ll just take both._

Max was right. He’d chosen the boots.

* * *

It was odd. To see Max and Neil around Billy.

Susan’s demeanour didn’t much change. Not like theirs. She had no ill-will to Billy before this. He stayed out of her way. Nodded his head and offered help with breakfast when he wanted to get out of the house faster. 

But Neil was a little more subdued. Still a little bound by old habits, had this gruff undertone in his voice when he reminded Billy he needed to rinse his dishes, held up one rough hand when Susan had started up, “No, it’s alright, really—” but he was. Different.

Max was worse. She spent the most time with Billy before the Starcourt fire. Had the most to change. Walking around on eggshells and asking Billy things like, “So what was it like? What’d you guys eat?”

Billy poked at a piece of chicken. Neil had shuffled off to the living room with a gruff, _glad to have you back, son,_ Susan knew was genuine. Even gave him a half-hearted hug with one arm around Billy’s shoulders and hovered above him for a moment, poised to give him a kiss on the top of his head like a doting mother before he thought better of it at Billy’s very soft, _good to be back, sir._

“Menu changed,” he chewed the meat like it was foreign, “One constant though,” there was a flicker of something familiar, “Tasted like shit no matter what.” He looked to Susan out of the corner of his eye, still nestled over the sink, sliding her flower printed rubber gloves on, “This is very good though, Susan.”

“Thank you, Billy,” she started the water up, straining her ears to hear the sound of the kids above the clunk of dishes hitting the bottom of soapy water.

“We fixed your Camaro!” Max said through a mouthful of food, “It was hard, though. Tires and windows were busted to hell, so we had to replace them all.” _We_ was a generous way to put it. Neil had been all but willing to let it sit. Even suggested tossing it to a shop those first few months when his anger for Billy still outweighed anything else. Turned to contentment to let it rot in the garage when it Dr. Owens told the three of them, all huddled around the phone, that Billy might not make it to the fall. 

“Thanks,” Billy muttered back, head angled towards his plate and followed by the sharp stab of a fork to the plate, “You didn’t hafta do that.”

“I needed something to do anyway.”

* * *

On some nights, they sat on the porch. Like two different worlds, looking out at Hawkins like they were from different wars. But Susan supposed that they were all the same in one way or another. 

Neil still smoked, still shuffled out to the porch when neither of them could sleep, extended an invitation to Susan by leaving the screen door hooked open, letting cold drift into the house and the porchlight on. 

On occasion, Billy came out there too, wild-eyed and ready to strike at something before he seemed to relax, as if saying _just Susan,_ and dragging himself back to his bedroom without a word. Never seemed to do it when Neil was out. Only Susan, all by her lonesome, staring out at the endless trees and wondering if she could finally find the letter with Neil’s wedding knock-knock joke on it or if Neil, in his infinite shame, had thrown it away.

But he sat down beside her tonight, a blanket fit for a ten year old around brittle shoulders, in the creaky old swing set that Susan had set up after a cockroach had scuttled its way across her legs when she sat down on the rough, outdoor carpet’s texture. Staring out into the dark. Looking, not for the letter, but for something Susan could never know in the same way she supposed Billy could never know the blackness that enveloped that bunker after the light had been blown out, the endless stretch of time before Will re-lit it.

She sat down beside him, somewhat surprised when he didn’t rush back inside. Just kept looking out at the dark, his limbs tucked into the sad circle of light the porch’s lamp made. Considered smoking again when she tried to find something to do with her hands, carefully pushing the swing into motion with her feet, “Do you know who you were named after?” She breathed into the dark, banishing just a touch of the cold.

Billy looked at her through the corner of his eyes, like he wasn’t sure if she’d spoken. When his eyes met hers, he shook his head.

She leaned back against the chipping paint, thinking of when Neil had told her Billy used to eat chips of paint when he was younger. That the only way he could get the kid to listen to him was to beat it into his head. “Your father’s best friend,” she put her hands in her lap, deciding that’s where they fit best.

Billy only nodded, tightening the blanket around his shoulders like he was afraid the damp, Indiana summer’s air would suck the few traces of warmth he had left away, like he was in a vacuum of cold. Susan felt the same, but the opposite. Always chased by the warmth of rotten bodies and bugs that left her with itchy bumps she had yet to figure out how to fully banish.

“He met him in the war,” she continued, thinking of the night they had decided to leave California, how Neil had stomped back into their room and held Will’s dog tag between delicate fingers and confessed that he wished Billy was more like Will. That he wanted to tell Billy what Will was like, to tell Billy what he was supposed to live up to. Or at least something he could be _better_ than. That he loved Billy. He had been drunk out of his mind, but Susan had never forgotten.

“He was a great man,” Susan cleared her throat, still clinging to those hours, those _years_ in that bunker, with Will across from her, holding Neil’s shoulder down with a look on his face that betrayed nothing but sureness, that everything would be alright. He was right. Everything was alright for everyone but him. “Saved your father’s life,” she let out a sigh of air meant to be a laugh, “Probably more than a hundred times.”

Billy still said nothing. So Susan kept going, “Told him he was an idiot for enlisting. Told him to get the hell out of dodge before he got himself killed but… Neil said he didn’t want to leave Will out there. Didn’t want him to die there. Will says, ‘I’m not dyin’ out here. Anyone’s dyin’ out here, it’s _you,_ Hargrove.’

“Jesus, you look so much like him. _Act_ so much like him. He was just like you. So headstrong. Always struttin’ around like he owned the world,” she paused, looking at Billy, seeing nothing but a blank slate, trying to gauge something, trying to put into words what Neil had told her all those years ago, “But you’re Billy,” she shook her head, bracing her hands against either side of herself, “I bet you anything Max’ll name someone after you instead.”

On her way inside, after the screen door had clicked shut and the porch light’s buzzing couldn’t be heard, she heard Billy say, more to himself, “Like hell she will,” like a promise. 

Susan didn’t sleep well that night.

* * *

Neil’s got a real talent at avoiding things. Picks up a whole lotta shifts at work when Billy comes home. Susan tends to the house. It’s not so bad. It’s no New York Times, but it’s busy enough. She’s always got something to do — fix Billy’s door, oil up Max’s bike, sew up a winter coat here or there, make dinner for Max and her posse of friends.

It’s been a week since the night on the porch and it’s not as though Susan was expecting things to overturn themselves, that they could Brady Bunch it up, but... It’s strange. Knowing that Billy’s seen this glimpse into her life that only Neil’s so much as known existed. She had been close to tears when she’d told him about Will, always stuck in that bunker in one way or another. Now, it was her voice, her words, that were stuck there. Too far from Billy to explain what she wanted. 

But he agrees. To go to a game where Max is twiddling her thumbs as a cheerleader. Agrees to let Susan drive her rickety old car down to the school. Wears his hoodie and keeps it up, even as they all settle in the stands, head down and shoelaces far too tight, as if he was afraid the shoes might slip off of his feet midstep.

“Do you want anything from the concession stand?” She asks over the low sound of marching bands and families giving each other pep-talks in their strange, small-town fascination with high school football. 

Billy peers up at her, curls poking out from the fabric around his head, dark eyebags made all the more visible in the bright lights. He looks like he wants to say something, to ask for a hotdog or something. But he thinks better of it and shakes his head. Susan figures an extra slushie or something couldn’t hurt. If Billy won’t drink it, Max will when she’s done.

She heads down, stands in a line surrounded by teenagers who try to flirt with the poor girl running concession, calls down some words of encouragement where Max is down by the other cheerleaders, doing their practice drills. 

Max can keep her friends up in her arms now. Can lift them over her head. Susan overheard Billy giving her advice on bodybuilding or something the other day. Can see it reflected when she barely breaks out a sweat, flanked on either side by junior boys who only seemed to be on the team to look up skirts. Just about ready to quit with Max kicking their ankles when they do. Susan decides to get her an ice cream on the way home.

When she sees Billy again, he’s got a group of people around him. Not _friends,_ certainly not friends with the tightness of his face, but not enemies. He’s not gripping the seats for dear life, just guarded and giving them one worded answers. Susan lingers at the bottom of the stairs leading to the stands, watches them.

There’s got four of them. Two of them she recognizes as the kids Max hangs out at the arcade with. Lucas and Dustin. They seem alright. Lucas is on thin ice with both her _and_ Billy. Stories she hears of him aren’t all that great. But she tolerates him. For Max’s sake.

And the other two — she’s seen them at the video store on the rare occasion Billy’s busy and she has to take Max down there. She figures she can ask Billy about them when they leave and leans against the railing to let others flow by and waits. 

* * *

Later, as Susan’s picking up stray trash left by families who’ve vacated with their kids and Max is across the field with those same kids dragging equipment to the school and Billy’s climbing back up the stairs, now free of a cherry slushie Susan had offered him earlier, she asks, “Who were those kids you were talking to earlier?” In a tone she hopes is friendly, “I swear I’ve seen them before.”

Billy clears his throat, joins her in gathering up garbage as they wait for Max, “Max’s friends,” and then, “Older ones are some old high school kids. Graduated already.”

“What on earth were they doing here?”

“They babysit.”

“Oh!” She feigns surprise, letting the garbage in her hands jolt up as if caught by an electric current, “We were thinking about giving you an—” she begins stacking it all up inside of each other, gathering up more, “—an allowance. For watching Max.”

“That’s alright. It’s no problem.”

“No, no,” this feels like another battle. They’re two quiet sides fighting over a shred of dignity and Susan has already lost enough as is, “I really don’t know what we’d do without you,” then, as a preemptive strike, “It was Neil’s idea. Since I’m sure it’s hard to get a job when you’re always watching her.”

Billy stalls in place, “Oh.” He clears his throat again, as if it could banish the perpetual gunk that kept his voice tight, “Thanks— thank you. Ma’am.”

“Susan is fine.”

“Susan,” Billy amends.

Susan feels like she’s won this one. Perhaps, if she really tries, next time, she’ll win the war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will get to billy later i just needed to set up susan's character more because once again i simply cannot stand the duffer brothers who wrote their gay little character and then fucking killed him as if that's an even half decent end to a redemption arc these days.
> 
> also follow me on www dot tumblr dot com @126romans 😁

**Author's Note:**

> fuck the duffer brothers and their bad takes on redemption arcs and ptsd <3


End file.
